


Effective Communication; Or The Lack Thereof

by htruona (circhester)



Series: Apparently Humorous LU One-Shots [6]
Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: (or so I've been told), :DDD, Accents, Crack, Gen, Gift Fic, Humour, Language Barrier, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), and i hope y'all have a blast reading this, honestly i had a blast writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:27:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23064700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circhester/pseuds/htruona
Summary: “Sorry, I don’t seem to understand.”Side effects of 'All My Friends Are From Different Eras Because Of Time Travel' include: differences in cultures leading to accidental insult of several monarchies; notquiteknowing how old one is due to having left the stretch of time relative to one's age; and, as the Links would come to realise, regular miscommunications due to spoken language varying rather largely between eras.(Or: The Links reflect on the language barriers that exist between them, and the issues in communication that those barriers often cause.)
Series: Apparently Humorous LU One-Shots [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1676488
Comments: 144
Kudos: 753





	Effective Communication; Or The Lack Thereof

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OrphisTheDragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrphisTheDragon/gifts).



> This is a gift fic for Orphis, created as part of the anniversary event for the LU discord! Thanks so much for sending this wee prompt in. I had _so much_ fun with it. The prompt I got is here!  
> Language barrier: The Links may not understand some metaphors, idioms the other Links use, they all speak different languages or they just can't say what they feel.

“So, let me get this straight,” Warriors said, pulling a notebook out of _somewhere_ to, well, take notes. “Wind speaks—”

—

“Land ahoy, me hearties!” Wind shouted, grinning as he deployed his sister’s telescope to view the town in the distance.

“Um,” Sky said, clasping Wind on the shoulder supportively, “we’ve been on the surface for the past six hours?”

Wind rolled his eyes. “Shiver me timbers,” he said. “I _know_ , but it’s fer th’ _effect_ , matey. Ye’ve jus’ _gotta_ say it when you reach a new place!”

—

“—Like a literal pirate,” Warriors finished.

Wind grinned. “Aye, I have years o’ life on th’ seas under me belt!” he exclaimed. This was an exaggeration—in fact, he only had about a year and a half of life on the seas beneath his belt. He hadn’t begun the pirate life until he was twelve, however— “Aft’r I stepped onto that ship fer the first time, I ne’er looked back.”

Warriors acknowledged Wind’s declaration with an encouraging grin, before moving on, turning sullen.

“Time speaks… like _that_.”

—

“ _Which action would you like to undertake?_ ” Wild’s Sheikah Slate said, the smooth robotic voice drifting through the air. Time prepared himself for what _should_ be an easy, simple task involving literally just asking for his sword—which Wild had put in the slate earlier—and being given it through some _voice recognition technology_ , whatever that was.

“Can I have the Biggoron Sword?” he asked, sounding—in his entirely unbiased opinion—perfectly understandable.

The slate paused for a moment, a small _ding_ escaping, before the little symbol signifying it was processing his request stopped. “ _Sorry, I don’t seem to understand_.”

Time blinked. “Er— awright,” he said. Maybe if he was more concise? “Biggoron sword.”

The slate _dinged_ again, but still didn’t appear to do anything. Time resisted the urge to get frustrated. It was just _technology_.

“ _Sorry, I don’t seem to understand_.”

Time sighed. Was there a special sort of phrase he had to say, or—? 

No, that couldn’t be the case, because Time had seen Wild yell out any sort of old nonsense and the slate responded perfectly. 

“Biggoron sword,” he tried again.

“ _Sorry, I don’t seem to understand_.”

He held down the growing rage in his stomach. “ _Biggoron sword_.”

“ _Sorry, I don’t seem to understand_.”

“Can ye no just— unnerstaun me, slate?” Time gritted out, absolutely _finished_ with holding his accent back if the slate wasn’t even going to appreciate it. “A _want._ Ma _sword_.”

“ _Sorry_ ,” the slate said again, sounding very unapologetic, “ _I don’t seem to understand_.”

Time inhaled deeply, trying to get a hold of his emotions. “Just _gies ma sword, awri_ —”

“ _Sorry, I don’t_ —”

“ _Wild_!” Time shouted, glaring at the slate with every ounce of bitterness he held within him. Wild came over calmly, tilting his head. Time steadied his breath, not wanting to burst out with anger. “Make it. Gie me ma sword.”

Wild blinked. The slate _dinged_ again, before—

“ _Sorry, I don’t seem to_ —”

“Och, be _quiet_ , you—”

“Biggoron Sword,” Wild said in that stupid old accent of his.

The slate dinged, and a moment later his sword appeared out of blue strings.

Time barely resisted the urge to throw the thing—whether he was referring to his sword, the slate, or just Wild as a whole person he wasn’t quite sure, only sure that it would be _extremely_ satisfying—into the lake.

—

Time blinked (er, winked...?). “Whit’s that meant tae mean?”

Warriors ignored him. “Twilight _also_ speaks like _that_ , but in a different way.”

—

Twilight approached Malon, half-terrified because she was technically his grandmother or great-grandmother or something, but half overcome by the need to not _possibly_ take advantage of their hospitality without giving anything in return. “Hey, ma’am, if I could be of any help ta ya, please—”

Malon blinked. “Mam?” she repeated. She barked out a laugh. “Am I no a wee bit young tae be your mother, lad?”

Twilight paused, not knowing _where_ the conversation had gone off the rails, but understanding firmly in his mind that it _had_. “Huh?” 

“Was that…” Malon said, “ _not_ what you meant when you called me Mam?”

“What? No, ma’am is, uh. A polite way ta greet a lady,” Twilight explained.

Malon’s expression shifted into a mixture of awkwardness and regret. “Och, Ah’ve made a mess ae this, have I no?”

“What? No, ya—”

“Ach, I’m sorry—!”

“No, _I’m_ sorry—!”

—

“Y’all just don’t get it,” Twilight drawled. “Especially you, city boy.”

Warriors ignored _him_ too. “Wild…” He trailed off. “Goddesses, Wild, what the fuck.”

—

“Thou didst not _telle_ me—”

Warriors winced. “It’s— ‘You didn’t’. ‘You didn’t tell me’.”

Wild inhaled deeply, rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers and wishing he could get the hang of, oh he didn’t know, a version of a language that _hadn’t_ faded out in the past century.

“I’m _tryeing_ ,” he said. 

“I still don’t get it,” Sky interjected, carving something out of wood. “Wild, if you’re in all of our futures, how in the eight great winds do you speak an _old_ version of our language?”

Warriors snorted. “Implying that we all speak the same language is a little presumptuous.”

“ _I dotht not know_!” Wild exclaimed. “Well, rather, it wase lykely that Kinge’s fault. Who deecidet that a centurie-olde Kinge sould be the one too teache me the Speache aft’r my sleep?!”

Unfortunately, Wild had failed to account for one thing during that sentence: the fact that the pronunciation had changed _a fair amount_ between now and the past—uh, now and the future—the future and the past?— _Wild’s pre-Calamity time and every other time_. So, words spoken quickly in his, er, language(?) would not be readily understood to one who did not speak the language.

It so happened that Sky and Warriors were both ones who did not speak the language.

“What did he just say?” Warriors asked.

Sky shrugged.

—

“Language changest overe time, appar’ntly, and I slepte for a long time,” Wild said. “I do not evene know. Do not aske. Please.”

Warriors wrote something down, sighing, and continued. “Four uses the royal ‘we’, all the time—”

—

“Can you _please_ just tell me already,” Legend said, looking as if his thoughts had driven him to the point of insanity. “Is there more of you, Four?”

Four shrugged. “That kind of information is exclusive to ourselves.”

“I’m on the verge of losing my mind. Can’t the information be a little less exclusive?”

“We don’t believe that it can be.”

Legend inhaled deeply, then walked away. Four resisted a grin as he left—his initial use of ‘we’ had been accidental, but _boy_ was he having so much fun with it.

—

“In our defence, we grew up with Zelda,” Four said, as if he wasn’t making up an excuse on the spot. Everyone accepted the excuse. The readiness with which they did so was so simple that it almost bored Four out of being vague in the first place.

Warriors sighed. “And Hyrule…” 

—

The group’s first meeting with Hyrule was, er, well, uh— _interesting_. Yeah. That was a word to describe it: _interesting_.

Each Link had their own specific take on the situation, for example Wind would say ‘fucking beautiful’ while Warriors would probably cry, but _interesting_ was a good enough word to encompass the whole scenario.

It all began simply: a few of the Links had stumbled across each other after somehow ending up in completely different times. They failed to communicate with one another—in their defence, the group consisted of Time, Wild and Wind at that point, whose speech was nothing but a load of absolute rubbish to each other—and promptly found the other Links, and communicated with each other a little better before moving on.

A few hours later found the group eight Links strong. Something told them—they weren’t quite sure what—that they had one more to find.

They wandered. They aimlessly walked through the trees. They, uh, kept going forward for a long time.

Eventually they stumbled across a cave. At that point, they were ready to turn back, when—

—A boy walked out of a cave, blinked at the group, and waved.

“G’day, mates,” he said. “What are you doing out here in the bush?”

He was received with eight blinks. It wasn’t long, however, before the silence was shattered with Wind’s laughter.

“Come on!” he exclaimed, looking around at everyone. “Shiver me timbers, ye’re all surprised he speaks weirdly too?!”

Link—well, er, Hyrule, but not quite yet—blinked. “Why would you be surprised?” he asked. Inside, he was also wondering just what ‘shiver me timbers’ meant, and was a little offended about his speech being called weird, but didn’t want to offend the poor kid. Maybe it was just a phrase he had yet to hear. One popular with the kids. It wasn’t as if he kept up with all this stuff, after all…

“Person’ly I amn’t,” Wild said. Hyrule really was confused this time. What the—?

Warriors clutched the bridge of his nose, looking more tired than anyone had ever seen him in the last six hours. “Please, I just want to be able to understand _someone_ …”

—

“Hyrule is perfect, and you won’t insult him,” Legend said. 

Hyrule beamed. “Thanks, mate.”

Warriors, seeing that he wouldn’t be able to speak any more of Hyrule without Legend glaring at him, turned to Sky. “Sky speaks _perfectly fine_ , apart from his _idioms_ —”

—

Sky blinked. “Every wing has a different whistle, I suppose—”

“ _What the fuck does that mean?!_ ” Wind exclaimed.

Warriors put his head in his hands and looked like he was about to start crying. “Sky, no…”

Sky wrapped an arm around Warriors, comfortingly rubbing his shoulder. “Come on, now. No use brooding over fallen pumpkins—”

“That doesn’t make me feel better, at _all_ ,” Warriors said. “I just want to understand.”

“Hey, we can’t know _all_ the clouds’ secrets, can we?”

Warriors sent a quiet prayer to the Goddesses to get him out of this mess.

—

“What can I say?” Sky said. “No matter where you go, the winds are always there to take you home.”

Warriors sighed. “And Legend is—” he began, before frowning. “Wait, what’s your gimmick—?”

Legend sighed. “That I learned six languages, can’t keep track of any of them, and can unfortunately use them all to understand everyone.”

—

Legend had an issue.

“Fuck,” he said, in response to said issue.

Warriors tilted his head. “Huh? What’s the problem?”

“I have a word,” Legend said, “but I don’t know the name for it. I know it in Labrynnan. I _don’t_ know it in Hyrulean, and it has been eating at my mind for over six hours, and I am. Very frustrated.”

“Well…” Warriors began. “Just ask someone.”

Legend blinked. “Alright. Do you know what the word _Brot_ means in Hyrulean?”

“Uh, nope.”

Heaving a great sigh, Legend departed to find someone who would actually be of help to his predicament.

Fortunately, and rather conveniently, it wasn’t long before he stumbled across Hyrule and Wild, chatting away over some biscuits that Wild had made earlier.

“Hey. ‘Rule, Wild,” Legend called. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?” Hyrule said. He then reached for a biscuit, offering it to him. “Biccy?”

Legend took the biscuit, thanking the Goddesses that Wild was _this_ good a cook. The biscuit _was_ really good. It almost made up for the fact he was translating Wild’s sentences all the time, because literally nobody else could understand a word he said on a good day.

“Do either of you know what the word _Brot_ means in Hyrulean?” Legend said. “Please. This has been bugging me all morning. I need to know.”

Wild and Hyrule looked at eachother, then shook their heads. 

“My deepeste apologiyes,” Wild said.

Legend sighed, and moved on. 

He found Twilight and Sky sitting by the extinguished campfire, Sky woodcarving and Twilight staring up at the sky. 

“Legend?” Sky greeted. “Which wind brings you here?”

Legend pursed his lips, not expecting either of them to know but figuring he should ask anyway. “Either of you know what _Brot_ means in Hyrulean?”

Twilight shook his head. “Ain’t got any idea,” he said. “Sorry.”

Legend sighed, trying to hold in a scream of frustration, and once again moved on.

His next targets: Time and Four. Time, who was doing some armour maintenance, and Four, who was doing the exact same but with the group’s weapons. Legend couldn’t help but notice that Wild’s weapons were suspiciously _not there_ and wondered whether Four had, understandably, finally given up trying to take care of the things.

“Do either of you know what _Brot_ means in Hyrulean?” Legend asked, not even waiting for either of them to see him.

“Brot?” Time repeated, unfazed by the sudden entrance. “Is that no an auld word for soup?”

Legend blinked. No, that wasn’t— “Soup is _Suppe_ in Labrynnan, no, it’s not soup.”

Four grinned. “Well, you'd _know_ the word if you had learned—”

—“No,” Legend interjected—

“—a language the way _we_ had—”

“—I've told you once and I'll tell you again, learning a language by eating a fruit is _bullshit_ ,” Legend said emphatically, as if he had spent a lot of time lamenting over Four's langauge-learning techniques. Because he had. Because they were absolutely _bullshit_ and he would _not_ stand for them when he had put all that effort into learning a language the regular way—

Four shrugged. “It was a nut. And we've not once ever forgotten a word in the Minish language.”

Legend glared at him, and Four's grin only grew, so he decided to go back to his original issue and ponder over his forgotten word. What was it again? Oh yes, _Brot_ , okay.

He rubbed his head, _trying_ to just _remember_ what the goddess-damned word was—

“Bread,” Four said. “Brot is bread, right? We remember that from our language lessons.”

Legend blinked. Four blinked back. There was an incredibly awkward moment of silence, before—

“Fucking _bread_!” Legend shouted, ready to actually tear his hair out. “I’m such a goddamn idiot, fucking _bread_ —!”

“Wha’ did that bread ever do t’ _you_?” Wind shouted across the camp. 

Legend ignored him. “Goddamn _fuck_! _Bread_!”

—

Warriors winced. “Oh, that _is_ unfortunate.”

“What’s your gimmick, then?”

“I don’t have one,” Warriors said bluntly. Legend blinked, not believing a word. “I speak normally.”

Legend huffed out a breath. “I doubt that, but okay.” He smirked. “I’m sure we’ll all find out soon enough.”

—

They did, indeed, find out soon enough.

“Look at this shit,” Legend said, throwing Warriors’ diary onto the table.

Warriors blinked. “Is that—”

“Yes, I stole it,” Legend said. “No, I don’t feel bad, and no, it’s not the first time either. You all need to hide your shit better. Just fucking _read_ this bullshit.”

“Oh no you—”

Wild snatched the diary from the table before Warriors even had the chance to take it back. A grin grew on his face as he opened it. “Oh, I neede to _see_ thise—”

His face fell as he began to read the words. Or, well, _not_ read them. 

“What the _fucke_ ,” Wild said, in the most modern slew of words he had ever put together in his life. How he had made it still sound old-fashioned, nobody had any idea. “I— I cannot— This ise _illegibyle_.”

“Tell me about it. Warriors, what the fuck?” Legend said.

Wild threw the diary onto the table, open, showing Warriors’ handwriting—if it could even be called that. The entire page was filled with loops and scribbles. The whole thing looked as if a child had scribbled over it, and Warriors was now the child proudly showing the picture to his parents, forcing them to give a tight smile, hang it on the wall, and say it was beautiful.

“Well, Ordona be damned,” Twilight said, peering at it. “The city boy has communication issues like the rest of us after all.”

Warriors gritted his teeth. “I’m telling you, I _don’t_ —”

Twilight vaguely gestured to the diary. Warriors deflated. 

“Oh,” Wind said in realisation. “ _That’s_ his gimmick...”

The group fell silent, as Warriors pondered his shame and the rest of the Links pondered their individual communication issues. 

Eventually, Legend spoke. “You know, I think we’ve learned something from this.”

Eight Links turned in curiosity to him. He sighed.

“That we all would have been much better off if we never spoke.”

A chorus of agreements followed, as nobody could find it within their hearts to _not_ agree—as if being a silent protagonist was in their nature, or something…

—

**BONUS:**

For years, there had been one sentence haunting Twilight’s mind. 

It seeped into every crevice of his existence, making itself known in every step he took; every decision he made; every swing of his sword. The words powered his very soul and cast his life ablaze in a fire of _I will do this_ , expelling any thoughts of doubt from his mind. The old saying was the motivation with which he found the will to lift his sword anew each day.

“ _A sword willnae hae ony strength_ ,” the words rang, a fierce yet encouraging undertone to them, “ _unless the haund haudin it haes courage_.”

Twilight smiled faintly, the words rumbling with power through him.

(He’d never admit that it had taken him a week to figure out what the Hero’s Shade had actually said.)

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed :D
> 
> also, if anyone's interested, here's the initial notes i took when brainstorming some ideas:  
> \- Wild speaks like an old grandpa. He has the olden day speech. Nobody is really sure how that works, considering that he’s in everyone’s future, but we’ll go with it.  
> \- Time? Scots. It's Time (ha) to furiously revisit every Scots text you've ever read.  
> \- Four uses the royal 'we'. Whether that's because of the splitting or just a thing he's always done is anyone's guess.  
> \- Wind is a pirate, mateys.  
> \- Twilight is southern, and yes, I do regret this.  
> \- Legend speaks like nine languages, and because of this, is the only one to be able to understand nearly everything the others say. He’s a very reluctant translator.  
> \- Sky speaks regular English, but every goddamn metaphor and idiom relates to the sky, or wind, or loftwings…  
> \- Hyrule is Australian. Like, really. His Hyrule is so fucked up that I can’t compare it to anywhere other than Australia.  
> \- Warriors speaks normally, but he writes in something like Russian cursive, which is basically a whole language in itself...
> 
> [tumblr](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLzxrzFCyOs)!!


End file.
